Red Hot Sports News: Manchester City forced to employ David Moyes as Financial Fair Play punishment

Uefa's punishment for flouting Financial Fair Play regulations is to have
rivals' manager in the dugout

Manchester City have been left reeling after learning that struggling's David Moyes will be installed as manager at the Etihad next season.

The savage sanction-rap shows that Uefa mean business on Financial Fair Play, and will not stand idly by as teams flaunt the proud amateur status of professional football.

“It is simply unfair that some get to buy success thanks to obscene amounts of money, often emanating from ethically dubious sources,” said a Uefa official as he licked great dollops of caviar off a Rolex given to him by a Qatari well-wisher.

“All this money they’re spending is being funnelled away from the true heartland of the game: brown envelopes for hard-working delegates. Something has to be done.”

That something, it appears, is hobbling City with their neighbours’ beleaguered Scottish manager.

“Fair competition is absolutely vital for our sport,” said a Fifa statement. “For instance, anyone from any country can attempt to bribe a Fifa delegate in order to get on board the World Cup gravy train.

"Big country, small country, country which is just a desert with no interest in football whatsoever, it’s a level playing field."

The news was described as “a shock” to City, who had initially attempted to outfox meddling Europrats with a brilliant scheme of sponsoring themselves. Against the odds, Uefa brainboxes managed to foil this cunning plan.

“We did have an inkling that the Sheikh giving us ten gazillion quid out of thin air might attract attention," admitted a Manchester City executive. “So we did this scheme where Martín Demichelis would do a sponsored moustache-growing contest and every time he cocked it up the Sheikh would donate a million quid.

“Demichelis kept shaving it off by mistake, getting confused and growing a beard instead, having his toilet parts waxed, setting his face on fire and so on.

"The Sheikh eventually forked over about three-and-half billion for Demichelis’s facial hair foolishness, and we thought we were sorted.

“But apparently Mr Platini says that’s not within the rules.”

David Moyes’s Sky Blue Very Unhappy Army, as they will be known, can count themselves unlucky because previous sanctions for breaching FFP have ranged from “basically sod all” to “absolutely sod all”.

Chelsea, also under threat, were initially ordered to make Arsène Wenger their new manager, on the grounds that he never spends any money at all.

However, the West Londoners successfully argued on appeal that the purchase of Fernando Torres for £50 million was “evidence of good faith that they are trying to keep football competitive.”